The proposed Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Immunologic Diseases of the University of Alabama at Birmingham is a multidisciplinary effort by faculty in the Departmens of Medicine, Microbiology, Pediatrics,and Neurology of the School of Medicine. The primary purpose of the CIRID is to bring together basic and clinical investigators so as to develop the bases for new scientific and clinical programs in asthma, allergic disease, and immunologically-mediated disorders and accelerate the transfer of knowledge from basic to clinical investigation and ultimately to prevention, diagnosis, therapy, and disease management. The proposed activities include basic and clinical research projects and a three-pronged professional education program directed at primary care physicians. Nine research projects in the focal areas of immunoglobulin isotypes, VH Genes and autoimmunity, immunogenicity and the immune response, and phagocytosis and effectors form the base for the CIRID to develop and strengthen scientific linkage to clinical programs in allergy, asthma, and immunologically-mediated diseases. The unifying theme for those focal areas, and the projects within them, is to link animal and human studies of the humoral immune system at the molecular and cellular levels. We hold to the thesis that studies of the basic immune response, regardless of the immunoglobulin class or cell type under investigation, have relevance to all applied and clinical branches of this intricate system.